I woke up gasping for air like I was drowning. And in a way, I guess I was. Drowning in sorrow. It was terrifying as my mind woke up from the tilt-a-whirl dream I was having. I was sobbing in it too.
I sat there for a second, in that moment between dream space and reality - not sure which was which. I reach out to Gary, ashamed I was about to wake him, but the fear was encroaching faster than I could dismiss it. When he finally mumbled and turned over - I slipped under the waves and couldn't breathe. I felt like waves of water crashed over my scrunched-up face. A pendulum of water squelching any hope I had to breathe. I felt my heart begin to race and I heard the sharp gasp for air as I tried to catch my breath instead.
The fear kept crashing over me. And I could hear myself begin to sob between the attempts to suck in oxygen. I couldn't choose which. Until the child-like sobs took over and I kept asking Gary if this was real. I wouldn't be going through this if the fear wasn't real, right?
There has always been the lingering doubt that I made the whole thing up. That I had convinced myself in some demented way that all that happened in Bangkok had never happened and I had told so many people that I made it the truth instead of the truth. That maybe the last time I woke up sobbing was some other festering wound in my soul that took over in my sobriety and it was just a good story to justify a random moment of Krazy.
But it happened again. And God wouldn't make me suffer that twice would he? Or maybe I just never wanted it to be true and so it's easier to pretend I made it all up...
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But in the dream before the nightmare I was a little girl. I don't know the cause, but I heard myself giggle in delight. I told my sleep-self it was a dream. And I felt such joy in knowing I was even happy in my dreams.
And then I was in high-school. Except it was a mental hospital. The way dreams are. The therapists are dressed in grotesque Batman -like caricature costumes. The tall boy with the clown pants and the jacket. My Freudian father? I think he was my assigned therapist. I don’t remember the others. A high school friend is there. I think he was in there with me. Some other clown was his therapist.
I was supposed to be going to the Ritz Carlton with Mr. Mothner before my wedding to Steve. I was supposed to be released. I had permission. But another nurse kept accusing me of things I hadn't done. She was deliberately holding me from my celebration. I had to go. I kept trying to tell someone it wasn't my fault. No one would listen.
And then I was yelling at the nurse. I was told to calm down. RM was trying to get me out but I was lost in a maze of costumed therapists. Then I understood they were interns. I wasn't given a doctor because I was an easy case. But the costume clown-boy was chasing me. He had his own demons to contend with. And then I stepped on the metal rasp of a broken tape gun. The mean nurse was trying to slow me down. I felt it dig into my heel but I kept running. I wondered why she was doing this to me.
And when I realized I was so lost it didn't matter anymore I just started crying. I heaved breath into my lungs in such despair. I told my dream-self that this was my way of being little again and feeling all that terror now that I could take care of her. The doctor ran toward me and put her arms around me as my chest heaved that shuddering way it does when your heart hurts. She kept apologizing. She thought I didn't need her care as much. She assured me she had cleared her calendar. I'd need a month. She led me to her apartment office and turned the soft glow of a lamp on and shut the door.
I woke up in a dream. Fighting for air.
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